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Dr. Toer’s
Amazing Magic Lantern Show
Viewer’s Guide to the 30-minute documentary
by the American Social History Project
In the years following the Civil War, a company of players travels the South
performing for audiences of African Americans recently freed from slavery.
Dr. J. W. Toer’s show presents the many meanings of freedom and the ways
African Americans struggled to realize the promise of Emancipation in the
face of growing violence and repression.
Visit the ASHP website for more information:
www.ashp.cuny.edu
A
W H O WA S D R . TO E R ?
t the end of the Civil War, a freed slave and Baptist minister
named J.W. Toer traveled the South holding public
meetings of men and women recently freed from slavery.
Historical documents show that these meetings featured
a “magic lantern show” entitled “The Progress of
Reconstruction” which illustrated the enormous
changes then taking place in the South.
Dr. Toer’s journey took place in the Reconstruction
years, 1865-1877, when Americans grappled with
the effects of the Civil War and Emancipation. Four
million black men and women made the enormous leap
from slavery to freedom and citizenship. With slavery
dead, the social and economic foundations of southern
society had to be rebuilt. It was potentially a revolutionary
moment, full of fear and promise. Its outcome would shape
the lives of black Americans—indeed, the lives of all
Americans—for generations to come.
Dr. Toer’s Amazing Magic Lantern Show creates
characters for Dr. Toer’s touring company—Noah
Brave, Marly Green, and the contentious Mr. Jones—
Black Civil War Regimental seal.
who help us to imagine what his show might have
A rare regimental seal from an African-American unit in the Union Army. The 3rd United
States Colored Infantry Regiment was organized outside of Philadelphia in August 1863
been like. And it provides a unique look at the Civil
War and Reconstruction from the point of view of the and was involved in the capture of Confederate batteries on Morris Island, South Carolina.
United States Army Military History Institute
freed slaves.
Photo of Freed Slaves.
The man in the left foreground, wearing a Union Army uniform, may have been one of their liberators.
1
United States Army Military History Institute
W H O M A K E S H I S TO RY ?
“The Freedmen’s
Bureau.”
In this cartoon, a valiant
officer of the Freedman’s
Bureau is depicted as
the only force capable
of preventing violence
between unruly mobs of
white Southerners and
former slaves.
A.R. Waid, Harper’s Weekly,
July 25, 1868
1861 Civil War begins;
Slaves begin
escaping to
Union lines
W
hen most people say “History,” they think of the
deeds of important men, such as presidents and
generals, and the dates of big battles. But history is also
the story of “ordinary” men and women, such as the freed
slaves—the way they lived, worked, and helped shape
American society.
For many years, historians saw Reconstruction as the
story of defeated gallant southerners plagued by Yankee
“carpetbaggers” who punished the South and enriched
themselves. Then, in the 1960s, historians began to change
their views. In the new, “revisionist” texts, the Ku Klux
Klan and other supporters of white supremacy were now
the villains, and Yankee Republicans were the heroes of
Reconstruction.
Neither traditionalists nor revisionists paid much
attention to the actions of the freed slaves. In the old view,
Freed slaves were seen as ignorant, child-like creatures
led into corruption and violence by the carpetbaggers. In
the revised approach they were seen as innocent, passive
victims of southern white injustice.
Now historians are asking new questions, which reveal
that freed slaves played a more active part in Reconstruction.
Based on this new scholarship, Dr. Toer’s Amazing Magic
Lantern Show can help us see the ways black men and
women struggled to overcome the legacy of slavery and
create independent lives for themselves—and how, in doing
so, they affected the course of American history.
Emancipation
1863
Proclamation; Fullscale use of black
troops begins
1865 General Sherman issues
“40 Acres” order; 13th
Amendment abolishes
slavery; War ends;
Lincoln assassinated
Ex-Confederates
1866
pass “Black Codes;”
Ku Klux Klan
formed
1867
African Americans
help re-write state
constitutions in the
South
14th Amendment
1868
guarantees
citizenship to
African Americans
1870 15th Amendment
guarentees black men
the right to vote; First
black Senator enters
Congress
“Race riots” in 1874
Louisiana &
Mississippi
1877 U.S. Troops
withdrawn from South;
Reconstruction ends
Supreme Court
1896
affirms “Jim Crow”
segregation
2
THE SECOND AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Refugees.
A Virginia slave family enters the
Union camp near Hanover Town,
Virginia, in this depiction from
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper.
Throughout the war, a steady stream
of black refugees sought sanctuary
behind Union lines as they fled
southern plantations and owners.
Edwin Forbes, May 29, 1864. Prints and
Photographs Division, Library of Congress
T
he Civil War, the bloodiest war in American
history, did not begin as a war to end slavery.
The North went to war in 1861 only to limit slavery’s
expansion and preserve the Union.
Northerners wanted to keep slavery out of the
West, to reserve new land for the use of free white
farmers and the free labor system. But northern
attempts to limit slavery led southern states to secede
from the Union. Soon the nation was at war.
Nevertheless, the war opened new roads to
freedom. As early as mid-1861, slaves began running
away from plantations to find the Union Army. While
some Union officers returned runaways to their
masters, others declared them free and requested
permission to use them as soldiers and laborers. In
1862, Congress responded with laws forbidding
the Army to return runaways. Finally, in January
Put to Work.
U.S. Navy dockworkers at a Union-held
southern port. As former slaves fled into
Union-controlled areas, they were frequently
put to work as laborers, supply line workers,
cooks and hospital staff.
3
United States Army Military History Institute
1863, President Lincoln enacted the Emancipation
Proclamation, which officially gave the war a
revolutionary purpose: the destruction of slavery.
The Proclamation cut off the Confederacy from
possible allies, such as Great Britain. It also struck
at the economic system of the South. After the
Proclamation, more slaves dropped their tools and
fled to the Union lines. The runaways helped cripple
the cotton economy and weaken the Confederate
war effort.
As the Confederates weakened, the Union war
effort grew stronger. Hundreds of thousands of exslaves built fortifications, manned supply lines, staffed
hospitals, and worked as cooks and laundresses in
Union Army camps. Soon black regiments were
formed and black men marched into battle against
their former owners.
MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY
“There are now in the
service of the United
States near 200,000 ablebodied colored men. . .
Abandon all the posts now
garrisoned by black men;
take 200,000 men from
our side and put them
in the battlefield or the
cornfield against us, and
we would be compelled to
abandon the war in three
weeks...”
—ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1864
“Marching On.”
The Fifty-fifth Massachusetts regiment marches
into Charleston, South Carolina, February, 1865.
Harper’s Weekly, March 18, 1865.
American Social History Project
T
he most well-known black regiments were formed
by northern free blacks. But 80% of black soldiers
were, like Dr. Toer’s Noah Brave, former slaves. Despite racial discrimination in the Union Army, black
troops fought fiercely in battles from Virginia to
Louisiana. Other ex-slaves, including former Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman, served
as scouts, locating Confederate forces and guiding
Union troops through unfamiliar territory.
By working for and serving in the Union Army and
Navy, black men and women helped win the war and
defeat the slave owners. Yet, at the war’s end, many
questions remained to be answered.
Northerners debated how to rebuild a loyal, prosperous nation. Southern whites asked, “Who will we
get to work our fields?” And the four million freedmen
and -women asked, “Will we now be free to live and
raise families independent of white control?”
Such concerns affected how Americans answered
a fundamental question: What should freedom and
equality for black Americans really mean? As different groups, South and North, black and white, put
forward their answers to this question, Reconstruction
began to take shape.
Fighting for Citizenship.
Members of the Provost Guard of the 107th
Colored Troops, U.S. Army, pose in this
undated photograph. African-American
soldiers comprised about 10 percent of the
Union Army; about one-third of all African
Americans who enlisted lost their lives.
United States Army Military History Institute
4
WINNING THE WAR, LOSING THE PEACE
S
hortly after the war ended, President Lincoln was
This didn’t agree with ex-slaves’ ideas of freedom
assassinated and Vice President Andrew Johnson and equality. Across the South, they held protest meetof Tennessee replaced him. Johnson had been loyal
ings. They called on the federal govto the Union, but opposed full equality for African
ernment to abolish the Black Codes
Americans. He pardoned the rich planters who
and grant black men the right to
had led the Confederacy, and allowed them to
vote. African Americans in Misre-take positions of political power.
sissippi wrote to Congress,
Ex-Confederate
planters
“As we have fought in fa(known to the emancipated
vor of liberty, justice, and
slaves as “buckras”) wanted
humanity, we wish to vote
to narrow the meaning of
in favor of it...“
equality. They used state
The Black Codes also outgovernments to try to push
raged many northern ReAfrican Americans back
publicans, even those who
toward slavery. In late 1865
thought equality meant only
and 1866 southern states
equal treatment before the law.
passed laws called “Black
Led by the “Radical RepubliCodes,” making it hard for
cans,” Congress passed laws
African Americans to obtain
and amendments to overthrow
land, and forcing most to
the Black Codes and weaken
sign year-long contracts to
the big planters’ Democratic
work for whites. African
Party. Congress also sent Union
Pardoned.
Americans could not vote
troops and agents of the FreedOne of Andrew Johnson’s most contentious moves was the pardoning of many
former Confederate leaders, thus allowing them to reoccupy positions of power.
or testify in court, and
men’s Bureau to the South.
In the caption to this cartoon, a pardoned ex-Confederate tells the President,
if they were insolent to
When President Johnson op“Look here, Andy, if you want Reconstruction, you had better set me over the
whole thing down in our state.”
whites, they could be put
posed these moves, the Radicals
in jail.
tried to force him from office.
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, August 1865. American Social History Project
Electioneering in the South.
Former slaves hold a political meeting in this Harper’s Weekly illustration from 1868. During the early phase of Reconstruction, the northern press was generally
sympathetic to such African-American attempts at political enfranchisement.
5
W. L. Sheppard, Harper’s Weekly, July 25, 1868. American Social History Project
C
THE POLITICS OF EQUALIT Y
ongress watched over Reconstruction
from 1867 until the early 1870s. With
white planters’ power restricted, freedmen
and -women could try out their own ideas
about the meaning of freedom and equality.
Politics was one of the most important arenas
for such activity.
Freed slaves eagerly organized local
political clubs and events, such as picnics
and parades. When black men won the right
to vote, they voted in large numbers for the
party that had supported emancipation—the
Republican party.
Black Republicans worked with northerners
who had moved South, including former
Freedmen’s Bureau agents and those who
had come to set up shops and farms. Some
southern whites also joined the Republican
Party. Most were poor farmers from the hills,
hoping to protect the independent way of
“The First Vote.”
life of the “upcountry.” At the top of the
This Harper’s Weekly illustration from 1867 shows three archetypes of African Americans as
southern Republican party sat a few white
depicted in the northern press during the early phase of Reconstruction: the skilled craftsman, the
businessmen interested in attracting investors
sophisticated urban dweller, and the Union Army veteran.
and encouraging new industrial development.
Alfred R. Waud, “The First Vote,” Harper’s Weekly , November 16, 1867. American Social History Project
Black voters elected hundreds of black
officials to positions in local, state, and even
national government. Though never a majority in people, black and white, and taxed rich planters to
any state legislature except South Carolina’s, black fund the South’s first public schools and hospitals. As
representatives helped construct modern constitutions judges, sheriffs, and jury members, they tried to protect
for southern states. They passed laws to help poor black communities from white power and violence.
Radical Republicans in South Carolina.
This composite photograph depicts the radical coalition of the South Carolina state legislature; among them are many African Americans holding elected
positions for the first time.
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
6
carpetbaggers, scalawags, & redeemers
“The registration of voters show that political power will
be in the hands of our late slaves. What shame! What
humiliation for us!”
—EX-CONFEDERATE, 1867
“The Wolf and the Lamb in Politics.”
Two stereotypes of Reconstruction politics are
shown in this 1875 illustration: the corrupt
Republican “carpetbagger” and the naïve,
easily manipulated black voter.
(J. Wells Champney) Edward King, The Great South...
(1875), American Social History Project
A
large majority of white southerners resisted
Reconstruction and refused to accept black
men and women as equals. They supported the
big planters’ Democratic Party, the party of white
supremacy.
The most well-known myths about Reconstruction are based on southern Democrats’ description
of their Republican opponents. The planters and
other Democrats labeled southern white Republicans “scalawags” and treated them with open contempt. Northern “carpetbaggers” were charged
with plundering the weakened South. Black officials were smeared as ignorant and corrupt. His7
torians now largely reject most of these charges as
political slander and exaggeration.
Despite strong black support, southern Republicans faced difficult odds. Each group in the
party—blacks, poor white farmers, bankers, and
“carpetbaggers”—had different aims. Blacks themselves were divided between the mass of rural
freed slaves and the leadership of elite free blacks
from the cities. Deeply rooted racism within the
party added to the difficulty of working together.
Democrats exploited these weaknesses in opposing Reconstruction and calling for the “Redemption” of the South.
THE GOSPEL & THE PRIMER
A
frican Americans’ hopes and dreams, suppressed
during slavery, were briefly allowed to flower during
Reconstruction. The actions of black men and women in these
years laid the foundations of the modern black community.
They reunited families and built lasting institutions, such as
the black church. And they struggled to overcome the legacies
of slavery, such as illiteracy, which crippled their efforts at
individual and collective advancement.
During slavery, planters had tried to keep slaves from
learning to read and write, sometimes even passing laws
against educating them. After Emancipation, free men and
women displayed a tremendous desire to learn.
Some freed slaves wanted to learn to read the Bible. Others
saw that they needed the skills to read land titles, figure out
wages, and advance themselves in the new world of freedom.
Northerners, including a few African Americans, came
South to teach the freed slaves. These Yankee teachers were
hard-working and idealistic, though sometimes patronizing.
Some treated freed slaves as “helpless grown-up children.” Like
many Yankees (including Dr. Toer’s Mr. Jones), some teachers
thought equality meant the ex-slaves should learn to think and
act just like northerners. “We can make them all that we desire
them to be,” one Yankee teacher wrote from North Carolina.
Laura M. Towne and Students.
Many northern reformers traveled to the Reconstruction South to assist
newly-freed black communities. Members of “Gideon’s Band,” a group of
young northerners, taught black pupils on South Carolina’s Sea Islands.
One such reformer was Laura M. Towne, who founded the Penn School for
black students.
R. A. Holland, ed., Letters and Diaries of Laura M. Towne (1912),
American Social History Project
“If I never does nothing
more while I live, I shall
give my children a
chance to go to school,
for I considers education
the next best thing to
liberty.”
—MISSISSIPPI FREEDMAN, 1869
Zion School for Colored Children.
The Zion School in Charleston, South Carolina, here shown in an engraving based on an earlier sketch by Harper’s
Weekly reporter Alfred Waud, was one of many run by African Americans in the years immediately after the Civil War.
“It is a peculiarity of this school,” Waud reported, “that it is entirely under the superintendence of colored teachers.”
Alfred R. Waud, Harper’s Weekly, December 15, 1866. American Social History Project
8
“40 ACRES AND A MULE”
“The Great Labor Question From a Southern Point of View.”
A Harper’s cartoon ironically contrasts the idle Southern planter with the
industrious former slave. “My boy,” the planter says, “we’ve toiled and taken
care of you long enough – now you’ve got to work!”
“Plowing in South Carolina.”
An 1866 engraving depicts a freedman plowing his land. Ownership of land was a crucial
issue to many former slaves, who saw it as vital to their independence. Although the former
slaves never received their “forty acres and a mule,” some, such as those in the Sea Islands
and along coastal areas of South Carolina and Georgia, did acquire land; in many cases, only
to have it revert to white ownership after the war.
Harper’s Weekly, July 29, 1865. American Social History Project
James E. Taylor, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, October 20, 1866. American Social History Project
“We has a right to the land.
. . Our wives, our children,
our husbands has been
sold over and over again to
purchase the lands we now
locates upon. . . And didn’t
we clear the land and raise
the crops of corn, of cotton,
of tobacco, of rice, of sugar,
of everything? And then
didn’t them large cities in
the North grow up on the
cotton and sugar that we
made? . . . I say they has
grown rich, and my people
is poor”
—BAYLEY WYAT, VIRGINIA FREEDMAN,
1866
9
C
ontrol of the land was a pivotal issue throughout the
Reconstruction era. At the war’s end, belief that Yankees
would give ex-slaves “40 acres and a mule” was widespread.
Freedmen and -women felt they deserved land in payment for
their work during slavery and their role in defending the Union.
Also, like millions of white Americans who settled the frontier,
ex-slaves felt that owning land was vital to true freedom. With
land, a family could grow its own food and be independent.
But as long as they had to work for somebody else, especially a
white man, they could never achieve full equality.
The idea that Yankees would divide the plantations was more
than wishful thinking. In late 1861, Union forces had captured
the South Carolina Sea Islands and turned over some land to
the freed slaves. This area, where African Americans spoke in
“Gullah” dialect, was home to Dr. Toer’s Marly Green.
In January 1865, Union General William T. Sherman set aside
millions of acres in coastal Georgia and South Carolina for use by
ex-slaves. Each family was to have 40 acres of farm land. While
thousands of families chose their lots, millions more saw this as
a sign of larger changes to come.
But in late 1865, President Johnson reversed Sherman’s orders
and returned the land to the former slaveowners. Bitter ex-slaves,
like Marly Green, had to sign work contracts with their former
masters or leave the land. Some resisted, but the Army and the
Freedmen’s Bureau enforced Johnson’s decision.
THE EMANCIPATED WORKER
Unity.
A southern
cotton planter
shakes hands with a
northern industrialist in this
illustration. The postwar emphasis on reconciliation between
the North and South often came at
a price for black freedmen, who saw
their interests ultimately abandoned
in the name of “Unity.”
E
x-slaves
continued
to hope for land,
but in vain. African
Americans never had enough
power in southern state legislatures
to pass land redistribution laws. And
when Radical Republican leaders asked
Congress to endorse redistribution, most
northern Republicans refused, arguing that planters’
property rights were more important than the freed
people’s desire for independence.
By the late 1860s, the northern Republican Party was
growing more business-oriented and less dependent
on working people. Many northern Republican leaders supported the growth of large industrial corporations and accepted the decline of independent small
farmers and craftsmen. Some Republicans also felt that
if African Americans divided the land and used it to
grow food, the vital cotton economy would be ruined.
By 1868 it was clear that the big planters would keep
the land. Forced to work for “the buckra,” freedmen
and -women like Marly resisted unfair contracts and
the slave-like gang-labor system. African-American
parents fought for their children’s right to leave the
fields in order to attend school. Above all, black families struggled to reduce white control of their lives and
labor and to expand the domain of family autonomy.
African-American farmworkers won some victories, but could not break the power of the big planters.
They settled for sharecropping, where black families
worked a piece of land on their own as tenants and
received a share of the crops. Though sharecropping
provided a degree of independence it often led to
problems of debt and poverty.
Library of Congress
Land Ownership and Southern Farms, 1900
All farmers
white owners
45%
21%
white tenants
26%
45%
7%
black owners
7%
26%
black tenants
21%
Total = 2.6 million farmers
AfricanAmerican
farmers
25%
75%
White
farmers
farm owners
farm tenants
36%
63%
Southern Farmers, 1900.
More than 25 years after the end of the Civil War, the results of the failure to redistribute
southern farm land to the emancipated slaves can be seen in these 1900 figures for who
owned farms and who worked as tenant farmers on land owned by others.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States (1975),
American Social History Project
10
WHITE TERROR
“A Prospective Scene in the ‘City of Oaks’”
A crude illustration in the Independent Monitor of Tuscaloosa, Alabama, suggests the treatment the newspaper’s editors felt Republican “carpetbaggers” deserved. The
newspaper’s editor was the Grand Cyclops of the local Ku Klux Klan.
Tuscaloosa Independent Monitor, September 1, 1868. Alabama Department of Archives and History, Montgomery, Alabama
R
econstruction was a bloody era. Many southern whites responded to African-American
freedom with rage and violence. Whites battered,
whipped, raped, shot, hung, and mutilated freedmen and ‑women throughout the Reconstruction years. In the early 1870s, some 20,000 black
men, women, and children had been killed by
whites. Today historians disagree about the exact
numbers, but most believe thousands of African
Americans were victims of white terror.
Some white violence was random. But more
often terror was used to resist racial equality and
return power to white hands. The Ku Klux Klan,
which drew wide support from southern whites,
served as a military arm of the Democratic Party.
Black politicians, African-American voters, and interracial political groups were favorite targets for
Klan attack.
“One Vote Less.”
This Harper’s Weekly cartoon reflects how the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in
July 1868, which granted former slaves the right to vote, was met with a violent response
from white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan.
11
Harpers Weekly, August 8, 1868; from Harpweek: Explore History, http://www.harpweek.com/
Victims of White Terror,
Colfax, Louisiana.
A Harper’s Weekly engraving
depicts the grim aftermath
of an attack on the AfricanAmerican community in Colfax,
Louisiana by an armed white
militia in April 1873. Some 280
blacks were killed after seeking
shelter in a local courthouse.
Harper’s Weekly, May 10, 1873.
American Social History Project
The Klan and other groups also
served to enforce economic inequality, “encouraging” African Americans to work for whites and punishing those who complained about
ill-treatment or fraudulent contracts.
Assaults on leaders of labor protests were common, as were attacks
on independent African-American
farms, schools, and churches.
Some African Americans fought
back with violence, but they were
outgunned. Others appealed to
Congress, and in 1872 the Army and
federal courts intervened against
the Klan. But soon white violence
began again.
“He Wants a Change, Too.”
Thomas Nast’s 1876 Harper’s Weekly cartoon, drawn in the wake of
the massacre of African Americans in Hamburg, South Carolina, is
unusual in several respects. Nast not only denounced the “bloody
shirt” campaign of violence waged against southern blacks, but, unlike
most northern whites, appeared to sympathize with African-American
attempts at self-defense.
Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, October 28, 1876. American Social History Project
12
B
THE END OF RECONSTRUCTION
y the early 1870s Reconstruction was collapsIn early 1877, national Republican leaders struck
ing. Weakened by internal divisions, southern a deal with the Democrats. Republican Rutherford
Republicans could not withstand the violent attacks Hayes was declared President and, in return, the few
by Democrats and their supporters. Economically U.S. troops still in the South were removed. Recondominated by the planters, African Americans had struction was officially over.
too little power to strike
In the decades that
back effectively.
followed African AmeriNorthern Republicans,
cans’ lives grew harder.
struggling with their own
By the 1890s only whites
problems of political corcould vote in the South,
ruption, industrial unrest,
and southern political life
and nationwide depreswas firmly under white
sion, grew less willing to
control. The “Jim Crow”
intervene in the South.
system of segregation was
Northerners turned away
put into place, tightly reas southern Democrats
stricting black social and
used fraudulent elections,
economic life. The instituviolence, and intimidation
tions African Americans
to regain political, ecohad created during Reconnomic, and social power.
struction, most notably the
The final blow came
independent black church,
with the 1876 Presidenhelped them to survive
tial election, which was
these painful years. But
marked by voter fraud on
it was many decades—
both sides. The Democratic
almost a full century—becandidate seemed to win A Republican “Scarecrow” Fails to Staunch Southern Violence
fore America would again
An unrepentant southern rebel discovers the true nature of the federal government’s
the most votes, but Repub- commitment to defend African-American rights. “Come on, boys!” he shouts in this 1874 confront the questions of
licans refused to surrender cartoon, “Old Grant’s bluster about our killing Republicans is only a military scarecrow,
freedom and equality it
the White House. Fears of a after all.”
had failed to solve during
Harper’s Weekly, September 26, 1874. American Social History Project
new civil war spread.
Reconstruction.
“Clasp Hands Across the
Bloody Chasm”
In an 1872 cartoon, some
northern Republicans urge a
reluctant African American
to “Clasp hands across the
bloody chasm” with a white
Confederate. By 1877 most
northerners were ready to let
white southerners define the
meaning of black
freedom and equality.
13
Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly,
August 24, 1872.
American Social History Project
NEW WAYS OF SEEING
Birth of a Nation
Considered a landmark of early American cinema, D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film Birth of a Nation
depicted Reconstruction as a time when a valiant Ku Klux Klan restored the birthright of
southern whites, wrested from them by avaricious northerners and craven African Americans.
Most of the “black” characters in the film were portrayed by white actors in makeup.
Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress
D
.W. Griffith’s classic 1915 film The Birth of a
Nation is considered a turning point in the
development of American cinema. Based on the
1905 novel The Clansman by Thomas Dixon, Jr.,
the film glorified the Ku Klux Klan as the savior of
white civilization from African-American corruption
and “mis-rule.” Its stereotyped images of vicious
and cowardly freed people, performed by white
actors in blackface, distorted Americans’ vision of
Reconstruction for years afterward.
But the actual visual record of Reconstruction was
more diverse and, for a time, promised to transform
the way Americans viewed race and equality. While
many illustrated publications continued to disseminate
racial stereotypes influenced by white supremacist
beliefs, others offered a new way to envision black
Americans.
Prominent among such new images were portraits
of black leaders. For example, in 1870 the Boston
firm of Louis Prang and Company, one of the leading
dealers of chromolithographs (popular color prints),
published a picture of Hiram R. Revels, the newly
admitted senator from Mississippi.
Hiram Revels, United States Senator
Hiram Revels of Mississippi was the first African American to
serve in Congress, serving a term as Senator from 1870-1871.
The seat he occupied had once been held by Confederate
President Jefferson Davis.
L. Prang and Company (after a painting by Theodore Kaufmann), 1870,
chromolithograph, 14 X 11 3/4 inches.
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
One admirer of the portrait was the great abolitionist
Frederick Douglass. “Whatever may be the prejudices
of those who may look upon it,” Douglass commented,
“they will be compelled to admit that the Mississippi
Senator is a man, and one who will easily pass for a man
among men. We colored men so often see ourselves
described and painted as monkeys, that we think it a
great piece of good fortune to find an exception to this
general rule.” Perhaps, he continued, black Americans
could now share in the pleasure of pictures enjoyed by
white citizens: “Heretofore, colored Americans have
thought little of adorning their parlors with pictures.
They have had to do with the stern, and I may say, the
ugly realities of life. Pictures come not with slavery
and oppression and destitution, but with liberty, fair
play, leisure, and refinement. These conditions are now
possible to colored American citizens, and I think the
walls of their houses will soon begin to bear evidences
of their altered relations to the people about them.”
That promise, along with other hopes for equality,
ultimately would be betrayed.
But the era of
Reconstruction left behind a visual record that lets us
see the many ways freed people exercised and fought
for their new rights.
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LEARN MORE ABOUT DR. TOER’S
Scholarly Works
American Social History Project, Freedom’s Unfinished Revolution: An Inquiry into
the Civil War and Reconstruction (1996) This history textbook, designed for high
school students, includes many primary documents and images.
Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 (1988)
Eric Foner, A Short History of Reconstruction (1990)
This definitive historical account of Reconstruction covers the political, social, and
economic aspects of the era.
Eric Foner and Joshua Brown, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction
(2005) This volume alternates chapters by Foner that lay out a brief history of slavery,
emancipation, Reconstruction, and white backlash with visual essays by Brown that
explore the era’s pictorial representations of these subjects.
Tera Hunter, To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the
Civil War (1998) Hunter explores the experiences of black working women in Atlanta,
including a detailed account of an 1881 strike by laundresses.
Leon F. Litwack, Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery (1979) This classic
study examines how newly emancipated slaves understood and experienced freedom
in the years after the Civil War.
Dorothy Sterling, ed., The Trouble They Seen: The Story of Reconstruction in the Words of
African Americans (1994) Excerpts from diaries, letters, and newspaper accounts tell the
story of freed slaves’ aspirations, achievements, and struggles in the years following
the Civil War.
Online Resources
Freedmen and Southern Society Project,
http://www.history.umd.edu/Freedmen/fssphome.htm
A rich collection of primary source documents from the National Archives can be found
here, along with a detailed chronology of emancipation.
HarpWeek, http://www.harpweek.com
This site devoted to the nineteenth-century newspaper Harper’s Weekly contains many
original illustrations and political cartoons from the Reconstruction period.
History Matters: The U.S. Survey on the Web, http://historymatters.gmu.edu
This comprehensive site includes numerous text and image documents on the
experience of African Americans during the Reconstruction era.
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CREDITS
Dr. Toer’s
Documentary
Written by:
Bret Eynon
Art Director:
Kate Pfordresher
Additional Art:
Josh Brown
Picture Research:
Bret Eynon
Original Music:
Jane Ira Bloom
Sound:
Charles Potter,
Radio Arts Production
Executive Producer:
Stephen Brier
Viewer’s Guide
Written by:
Bret Eynon
Edited by:
Ellen Noonan,
Sean Griffin
Designed by:
Marie Murphy,
Michele James
Historical Consultants:
Eric Foner, Thomas Holt,
Leon Litwack, Barney
Pace, and Leslie Rowland
Copyright 2007,
American Social History
Productions, Inc.
(Permission granted to
reproduce for educational
purposes.)
the who built america? materials
Dr. Toer’s Amazing Magic Lantern Show and nine other documentaries are a part of the Who Built
America? series, which explores the central role working women and men played in key events
and developments of American History. See also the two-volume Who Built America? textbook,
Freedom’s Unfinished Revolution, a high school text on the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the
WBA? interactive CD-ROM.
Complete list of WBA? documentaries:
History: The Big H— This film-noir detective story introduces the history of working people and the challenge of
understanding the past.
Tea Party Etiquette— Boston shoemaker George Robert Twelves Hewes narrates his
experience of the Boston Tea Party, Boston Massacre, and the American Revolution.
Daughters of Free Men— Lucy Hall leaves her New England farm to work in the
Lowell textile mills of the 1830s and confronts a new world of opportunity and
exploitation.
Five Points— The story of 1850s New York City and its notorious immigrant slum
district, the Five Points, is seen through the conflicting perspectives of a native
born Protestant reformer and an Irish-Catholic family.
Doing As They Can— A fugitive woman slave describes her life, work, and day-today resistance on a North Carolina cotton plantation during the 1840s and 1850s.
Dr. Toer’s Amazing Magic Lantern Show— The struggle to realize the promise
of freedom following the Civil War is told by ex-slave J.W. Toer and his traveling
picture show.
1877: The Grand Army of Starvation— In the summer of 1877 eighty thousand
railroad workers went on strike and hundreds of thousands soon followed. The
Great Uprising began a new era of conflict about equality in the industrial age.
Savage Acts: Wars, Fairs and Empire— The story of the Philippine War (18991902) and turn-of-the-century world’s fairs reveal the links between everyday
life in the U.S. and the creation of a new expansionist foreign policy.
Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl— Framed by the 1909 New York shirtwaist strike, this program
presents a panoramic portrait of immigrant working women in the turn-of-the-century city.
Up South: African-American Migration in the Era of the Great War — Narrated by a Mississippi barber
and a sharecropper woman, Up South tells the dramatic story of African-American migration to industrial
cities during World War I.
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